CANOE -- JAM! Television: Milligan baring up on '90210'

As a cast member on 90210, Canadian Dustin Milligan quickly got used to a certain amount of, uh, nudity.

"They put up this photo of us when we all were in our bathing suits, and I couldn't even believe I took my shirt off for a picture," said Milligan, a native of Yellowknife.

"I didn't used to be an athlete. I was more of a skateboarder and a snowboarder. I was kind of the anti-jock for a long time."

So you were the coolest kid in the Northwest Territories, huh?

"I tried, I tried," Milligan said. "I thought so, but I was wrong."

Well, Milligan's cool quotient surely will rise tonight with the debut of 90210 on Global and CW. It's a continuation of the original Beverly Hills 90210 and it features some of the former cast members such as Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth.

INSIDE TRACK

Milligan plays Ethan Ward, a high school lacrosse star, of all things. Since lacrosse officially is Canada's summer national sport, perhaps on a genetic level Milligan had an inside track for the job.

"People talk about identifying with their characters, and I really don't identify with my character at all," admitted Milligan, 23. "He's a privileged jock living the Beverly Hills lifestyle, whereas I grew up literally in eight months of darkness."

Yes, it's a long way from Yellowknife to Beverly Hills, literally and figuratively.

"There's a lot of mining up there (in Yellowknife), a lot of government work, and there are a lot of ways you can make a lot of money quickly and just kind of call it a day," Milligan said. "But I didn't want to do the whole life-by-default thing.

"Once I graduated from high school, I figured I was going to go into debt if I tried to get that post-secondary education.

RELIEVED

"So I thought, I might as well try to get into acting and do what I want to do now, while I'm still young enough and naive enough to attempt it, and hope for the best. So I'm just so relieved."

Milligan may be relieved, but he admitted some members of his family still have reservations.

"My mom always is worried I'm going to become some Hollywood tragedy, some nightmare," Milligan said with a smile.

"But the one thing about staying in Yellowknife was that I got the morals that my parents provided for my sister and me. If you look at some of these kids who do grow up (in Beverly Hills), I can't believe what's going on, kids 13 and 14 years old, getting into really serious stuff. I'm shocked.

"But we go beyond the stereotypes you would expect in a show like this. We aren't exploiting teenage excess, or excess in general, but rather trying to find out who the people living in these environments really are and how they're surviving. I think that's interesting stuff."